While many video streams of space now populate the Internet, all include an object in the foreground—the Earth, the moon, stars, the space station—all to afford context. Space Cam Live is a proposal to put a satellite into Earth's orbit to deliver an alternative: outer space unencumbered by a plethora of space trash, cosmic objects and interstellar phenomena, 24/7.

Space Cam Live aims to use CubeSat, a very successful, standardized, and inexpensive small satellite system. CubeSat can carry a small instrument oriented toward a target from a desirable orbit and transmit information to a ground station on Earth. Space Cam Live will use a CubeSat equipped with an optical camera oriented to continuously view the dark sky, preferably from a dawn/dusk, sun-synchronous orbit along the terminator of sunlight. The project will draw upon extensive experience with optical cameras in space to select a space-qualified instrument. The camera will capture 30 pictures per second, too fast to register starlight and relay these images to Earth to stream live onto the web.

Space Cam Live employs the seemingly simple experience of peering into outer space to question the unknown and imagine what could be. It has no narrative, no characters, no sound, no montage. Yet, it reflects on two of cinema's most arresting and paradoxical imperatives: to illuminate as well as question what is real. Suspended between science and imagination, Space Cam Live offers opportunities to contemplate our technoscientific history of space discovery and can inspire viewers to consider what outer space means to them. How is it perceived and represented? Is outer space just a nighttime landscape? An opportunity for personal spaceflight travel? A place of fantasy populated by imaginary creatures and sentient beings? Will the future bring interplanetary expansion and colonization, hastening the advancement of astroculture? Gazing at outer space, will futuristic technologies provide a portal to our next adventures or an escape from a failing planet? Space Cam Live offers these questions and more. Special thanks to Alli Miller, Chet Koblinsky, Martin Dicicco, and Boa Simon for their support and insight.